I once had a 'rare' opportunity to join a MLM outfit that was starting up (no not a Ponzi scheme, they were selling a real product.)

I took it.

I got less back than I had put in.

The next time someone came to me about an MLM opportunity, I declined.

So it is worth learning by experience.

When my wife was in high school she snuck into a field with some other kids and rode on a bull. Amazingly, she was thrown and kicked but not seriously hurt. She's learned by experience too-- she's never told my kids she did such a stupid thing.

I had two rare opportunities: In Marine boot camp, it turns-out I was an unusually good swimmer. I was offered a change in MOS to frogman. I declined since I was a reservist and would have had to to a full 4-year tour and I had planned to attend college the next year. This decision I now regret.

A couple of years later I was hitch hiking home from the train station and got picked up by a couple who indicated that they wanted to engage in hanky-panky. Something about their demeanor made me suspect that I was in the kind of situation which would end with me in a ditch with a gunshot wound to the back of my head. I am glad to have declined their invitations.

Oh, there is a third: I was offered a spot on a business case competition team when I was getting my MBA. I accepted this offer and the competition was incredibly stressful. I am glad I did it though.

I liked how Charles Baudelaire addressed a similar topic in one his prose excursions - The Bad Glazier One of my friends, the most inoffensive dreamer that ever lived, once set fire to a forest to see, he explained, if it were really as easy to start a fire as people said. Ten times in succession the experiment failed; but the eleventh time it succeeded only too well.

Another will light a cigar standing beside a keg of gunpowder, just to see, to find out, to test his luck, to prove to himself he has enough energy to play the gambler, to taste the pleasures of fear, or for no reason at all, through caprice, through idleness.

It is the kind of energy that springs from boredom and daydreaming; and those who display it so unexpectedly are, in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamiest of mortals.

While in the seminary, the rector posted a notice about spending a month in S. Korea. I jumped at it, figuring, among other things, the odds I'd ever get to Korea would otherwise be rather slim. It was one of the best adventures of my life, not comparable to Allen being a paratrooper:

13 years ago, after years of trying and giving up out of nowhere i got a job offer to work on tv in ny. it was a risk and it was a chance i might never have gotten again. i was leaving a very secure place for comeplete insecurity. I decided to take it and i'm glad i did. Had 12 great years and it was the best years of my career. Now im back in the safe secure place and i have no regrets whatsoever.

I received an offer to go to Japan directly after college to work for Pioneer Electronics. While the salary wasn't particularly great, I would have been given room, board, and extensive training in Japanese language and business culture for several years.

For a variety of reasons I think I did the right thing. For one thing, the offer came in before the collapse of the Tokyo stock market in the 90's. The opportunities I've had here in the States have been pretty great, too.

Rare from scarcity. Scarce because of value. High demand, low supply. Those are the ones you take.I had the opportunity to leave my job for another.. I used the opportunity to bargain for a raise .. I got the raise and stayed.

I had an opportunity to invest in something I had a lot of faith would succeed. I was persuaded to not do so by people who had done more investment experience than me. But I would have made a pretty large amount of money in roughly 3 years had I done so...~$4 mil.

Opportunities abound when we are young, but we are too inexperienced to know how rare opportunity can be. We think they will come along regularly and we can pick and choose.

I turned down a job opportunity once because I thought they just wanted me to fill a quota. I didn't think I'd earned it yet and I would be damned before I let anyone say of me "she just got it because she's a woman." I now know better.

I am sorry I turned down the chance to write a nuclear medicine textbook with a colleague at Hopkins. I had too much on my plate at the time and I figured the opportunity would be there when I was ready. Never happened.

I'm much more comfortable with opportunities I seek out. Someone comes to me with a great opportunity and I usually run the other way as fast as possible. For the most part, this has been a good policy.

Was it the Me and Bobby Mcgee lyrics that say "having nothing means having nothing left to lose"? The young 18 to 22 age unmarried will jump into all kinds of risky things just to say they did them. But the real acts of courage come from risking all for another when you are old enough to know how easy it is to lose your life. There is a special kind of confidence that gets inside you from repeatedly taking that kind of risks. Young Airborne troopers and young Marines have characters that stick out like an obviously different breed of man when you interract with them. Could this be the real cause of the rivalry of publicity drunk liberal political figures with the Military?(None of this comment is about suicide for kicks, which is a mental illness).

I had the rare opportunity to become a Russian linguist with Air Force Intelligence instead of a computer programmer in the late 70s. Some people have a gift for linguistics others have to work very hard at it. I was the latter. I did it for 15 years often it was interesting and exciting, most of the time it was very boring. I wish I had gone the programmer route.

When I was in high school, they were considring adding Russian to the foreign language curriculum. That was viewed as an opportunity of course due to the presumption Russia would be the next big military & commercial power for 100years or so.

That was in the late 1960's. How'd that work out? Never forget to factor in lady luck.

I get calls all the time offering me rare opportunities. I usually end the conversation by asking the solicitor if he's offered this rare opportunity to his mom, and if she bought in. If he doesn't hang up on me, I'll ask him why he's calling total strangers with this rare opportunity rather than all his friends and family.

About 15 years ago or so, when IBM was trading in the $30 range, I thought it was ripe. My only regrets are that I didn't borrow everything I could to buy more than I did, and that I didn't hold it longer than I did.

The original question was whether we've been tempted to take a rare opportunity because of its rarity. Never.

I wouldn't call any of the things I've done opportunities. Nothing has ever just appeared in front of me for me to accept or reject. Everything I've done as been of my own making, and thus I don't define them as "opportunities." It really does depend on your definition of the word I suppose.

Everything I've done as been of my own making, and thus I don't define them as "opportunities."I feel sorry for you man, serendipity must have really screwed you. But I guess that depends on your definition of serendipity and screwed.

Don't feel sorry for me. Know that it's just my way of telling myself that I have complete control of my life. I need to have that control, but it doesn't mean that many wonderful things haven't come into my life, because they have. And I willed them to happen in one way or another.

Some might see these as opportunities, or serendipity, but I see them all as my actions leading to results. I've never really been in love, and maybe when/if that happens, I might have to change my mind though. I look forward to changing my mind.

I feel so extraordinarySomethings got a hold on meI get this feeling Im in motionA sudden sense of libertyI dont care cause Im not thereAnd I dont care if Im here tomorrowAgain and again Ive taken too muchOf the things that cost you too muchI used to think that the day would never comeId see delight in the shade of the morning sunMy morning sun is the drug that brings me nearTo the childhood I lost, replaced by fearI used to think that the day would never comeThat my life would depend on the morning sun...

1. a) A favorable or advantageous circumstance or combination of circumstances.b) A favorable or suitable occasion or time.2. A chance for progress or advancement.I do not think the word means what you think it means.

Few people miss opportunities if they perceive them. Perceiving them is the trick.

I lived for several years in a friend's house at a very cheap rent, on a very nice bit of property in the Santa Monica mountains. When I was moving, I had a friend try to dissuade me. He was convinced there had to be a down side. Legal liability. Something.

I'm going to be in Chicago on a trip. She is going to be in Chicago on a trip. I learned about her trip from an online update.

Her last day in town is my first day in town.

She's nice and all, but I don't really see any future. I have a lot of friends already.

Do I tell her I'm going to be in Chicago at the same time. We haven't talked in a few weeks. I could totally go there a week, and she'd never know. Kind of a hassle to meet up and hang out, if there doesn't seem to be anything.

This is my chance to meet her in person. Maybe my only chance.

Online friendships are fine, that's all I was really wanting anyhow. Real life friendships carry baggage and expectations. I don't want her to get the wrong signals.

Do I let her know I'm going to be in Chicago?

No. She's nice and all, but no sparks. I decide not to tell her.

Ah, I'm thinking too much, I say to myself later that afternoon. Just get it out of the way. Hang out. For an afternoon. No big deal. Just do it. Thinking too much never helps.

Yes, I decide, I'll tell her I'm going to be in Chicago on the last day of her trip.

My whole life since 1972 has been a rare opportunity to take care of and be taken care of (and dominated and monopolized) by a rather unusual displaced person (variously described as a traumatized survivor, "stray tyrant," "male earth mother," "last of the Titans," etc.) instead of having a normal life. Adventures and demands instead of a home, kids, financial security, and an undistorted career. At the time I almost felt I didn't have a choice, but that was a choice. I gained a lot and lost a lot. Go figure.

Last fall I had the opportunity to make an ostentatious display of my anti-racist credentials by supporting a person of African descent for high public office. I chose not to do so because he didn't seem ready for the job.

I had the rare opportunity to join the Marine Corp at 17. I had scored a 100% on my ASVAB in 15 minutes. My recruiter more or less told me I could have any job I wanted in the Marine Corp. so I asked him if there were any spots to become a Marine Aviator. There were 2 open. I took one slot. Because I was 17 my parents had to sign for me. I already graduated high school with honors, but I wouldn't be 18 until February of the following year. My dad signed the paperwork, my mother didn't. I was pissed.

The recruiter told me to come back when I turned 18. I told him I would. I was really mad at my mother, but she took my anger in stride. By the time I was 18 my life was completely different. I still regret not having served my country in that way, but I hopefully found another way to have done it by becoming an engineer and contributing to it in some small way. That is life, we don't get what we want and I think that a true test of ones character is how you handle it.

kentuckyliz and amba: both comments are mesmerizing and I want to know more...but am resigned to not being told more.

I knew a woman for a short while who was that rarity, a great beauty, and had been married to a wealthy man (sold to him?) when she was quite young. When I knew her she had been divorced for a decade but they still had an "arrangement." And she still retained his surname.